Curiosity seekers inundate small town near Morganza Spillway

MORGANZA -- This no-stoplight town could probably use a temporary traffic signal to deal with a steady stream of curiosity seekers drawn to the Morganza Spillway, which is expected to be opened soon for the first time since 1973 to divert water from the swollen Mississippi River.

Paul Rioux/The Times-PicayuneLifelong Morganza resident Charles Serio, 91, holds a photograph he took of his siblings after the Great Flood of 1927. That flood prompted construction of the Morganza Spillway, which is expected to be opened soon to divert water from the swollen Mississippi River.

Watching cars whiz past his gas station Friday morning, Eugene Serio, 80, said he’s never seen more commotion as a lifelong resident of Morganza, a village of 687 surrounded by soybean and sugarcane fields.

“Everyone wants to get a look at the spillway,” he said. “The problem is that there really isn’t much to see.”

A drive across a bridge adjacent to the nearly mile-long spillway structure revealed he was right.

Aside from a news media encampment at one end, there were no signs of activity on the structure, which has 250 gates than can divert up to 600,000 cubic feet of water per second from the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya Basin.

But the gawkers keep coming.

After a woman was seriously injured Saturday in a rear-end crash caused by a rubbernecker, police put up a flashing sign warning motorists not to stop along a 5-mile section of Louisiana 1 along the spillway.

While many communities along the Atchafalya River are bracing for up to 25 feet of floodwaters, the town that gave the spillway its name isn’t expected to get a drop.

“We’re supposed to be high and dry,” said Lyndon Leonards, who lives in nearby New Roads. “Our levees are a lot better than in 1973, but they’ve never been tested like this before.”

Longtime town residents said flooding was relatively mild when the spillway was opened 38 years ago to ease pressure on the Old River Control Structure about 35 miles upstream.

“I think there’s more apprehension than in 1973 because the water’s going to be a lot higher,” Serio said.

But having lived through the Great Flood of 1927, Serio’s brother, Charles Serio, 91, wonders what all the fuss is about.

He said Morganza was inundated with several feet of water when the levee breached a few miles upstream.

“When the levee broke, daddy put us in the Model-T and hauled us to Baton Rouge,” said Charles Serio, who was 7 at the time.

The water was still knee deep when he returned weeks later and took a photograph of his siblings playing in the water.

“Kids don’t worry about all the consequences,” he said. “All we did was think about how we could have fun in the water.”

He said he wouldn’t mind all the traffic if more people stopped to buy gas at his brother’s station, which has been in his family for 90 years and hasn’t changed all that much since the days of the Model-T.

The full-service station still has analog gas pumps and features an old-fashioned soda machine that dispenses Cocca Cola in bottles.

“With all this traffic, we need to put up a sign that says, ‘Get your gas now before this is all under water,’” Charles Serio joked.